The Juan Soto sweepstakes, to the public’s knowledge, is down to five teams. Those teams are the Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, New York Mets, and Los Angeles Dodgers. To this point in the negotiations, the numbers attached to the bids on Soto have been kept pretty secret, though, we can assume these bids are close to or higher than $600 million.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic has reported that each team left in the Soto sweepstakes has a bid on the table for more than $600 million. But Rosenthal also reported that, according to agent Scott Boras, Soto has begun the process of eliminating teams, which means there may not be five active bidders left.

“When you’re going through these things, he’s just got a lot of information to meld through,” Boras said Tuesday. “We’ve had meetings with a number of franchises. He’s begun the process of eliminating teams and doing things. Juan is a very methodical thinker, so we’ll see, but I don’t think anything is imminent in the near future.”

It’s tough to decipher what this actually means. It could mean that Soto has begun to rank the teams in his mind that he would want to go to, but still leaving the door open for all five franchises.

It could also mean that Soto has completely eliminated a team or two from the sweepstakes for one reason or another. All we have is speculation at this point. Soto is expected to sign in the next week or two and his deal will be with one of the five teams listed above for well over $600 million.